


Heavy Water

by PureAU



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Hale Family, Alternate Universe - Derek is human, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Language Barrier, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-18
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2018-03-03 15:26:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2855792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PureAU/pseuds/PureAU
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The uncanny depths of the Pacific wasn't necessarily the reason he despised of the ocean. There were things down there: quick things; murky things with webbed hands and no legs; things with sharp teeth and wide eyes. </p><p>One of them watched him.</p><p>He watched back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heavy Water

**Author's Note:**

> Mermaids. Mermaids are my problematic fave and I don't think that's going to change anytime soon.  
> I also now know far more about the whale population of California then I really have any need for or use for.  
> Any questions on the take I have on merfolk or want chat about anything and everything (but mostly nothing) feel free to ask me on [Tumblr](http://allodoxia.tumblr.com/).
> 
> The opening italics rough translation is:  
> Unreal  
> You appeared to me  
> To no other  
> And became nothing

_Óraunverulegur_  
_Þú birtist mér_  
_Engum öðrum_  
_Og verður að engu_

Drums of war pounded against the golden shoreline in the dead of night and the light of day. Light where no man could see, sound where no man could hear, life where no man could breath. The expanse of blue water stretched in every direction to the horizon.  Derek feared it in the cautionary way children fear strangers; warm to their idea, shy to their call,  and overall reluctant to engage.

 

Until he saw it.

 

It being used to describe the murky not human creature that goggled him openly from underneath the ocean’s surface.

 

Oh fu-uh-uh-ck no. Derek lifted placating hands as a safeguard for any unwarranted sea monster attacks; which spiked amusement in his new admirer. Perfect, sadistic being of the deep meet the opposite of masochistic, Derek Hale, shoo.

 

He left the thing beneath the water.

 

Watching him.

* * *

His creature - because no one had alerted the national news over the discovery of mermaids (rain check on the pc term) therefore it was sort of his mermaid -  watched uncomfortably closer when he returned from his week long therapeutic get away from the ocean which was supposed to be a therapeutic getaway to the ocean. Either way, the vacay from his vacay hadn’t worked obviously considering there was still a thing watching him ten yards off the shore line.

 

“Vacay gone cray cray,” Laura snorted when Derek begrudgingly explained why they needed to stay near the boardwalk and not go close to the waves. Whether that meant she believed him or not he’d take a gander and go with yes, she totally believed in living things living under water where anything that isn’t fishy can’t live. But it made him look alright in the noggin so he’d take what he could get.

 

An hour into reading a book that if he was being honest with himself he hadn’t actually been reading suspicious rippling sounds floated over from the water. His first thought was to snap and point toward the drop off point, but his second idea to see where the hell this could possibly lead seemed less taxing on his stress levels.

 

Quick lilting chirp like squeals and soft barks called his attention to the impatient thing waiting much closer to the shore then when he arrived. Human cat calls followed when he took too long to reach the water; squawks like seabirds when his toes breached the lapping waves.

 

He took one look at the pale grey skin of his budding companion; one glance into pupiless rustic brown eyes; a quick flit to the spots of white upon the creature's head and neck to turn on his heel and walz far, far away from the ocean.

 

The deep, cracking hum accompanied by a hollow howl broke his heart but not his resolve.

* * *

Laura called him insane. Derek settled on smart. The creature settled on not giving up until this bitch is mine. Derek’s words, not the merperson's.

 

“Holy shit on a stick, Der, that’s a… a thing. I mean a person. What do I call it? Him?” Cora inquired quite loudly from her seat too close to the myth for Derek’s comfort. The monster growled - Walrus - splashing a gargantuan tail.

 

“I call him,” Derek cleared his throat, nervous of the merfolk’s webby clawed hands near his sister’s legs, “or well, I had been calling him my creature,” Laura laughed loudly making her way toward Cora and the potential danger in the water that every-goddamn-one wanted to play buddy buddy with.

 

“Stiles,” barked the creature so suddenly Derek nearly didn’t catch it.

 

“Did he just-”

 

“I think-”

 

“He imitates, do you not have ears? All of the sounds are learned and I assume it’s to lure in prey and look, you’ve been successfully lured. Good job you two.” Stiles produced trill glissandos that threatened to shatter all three siblings eardrums with it’s frequency.

 

“Well, I’m calling him Stiles,” throat creases near Laura’s outstretched hands dropped to allow drum like calls to escape. Derek raised an eyebrow at the obvious sass while grumbling at Laura.

 

“Be a grouch, I think he’s beautiful and totally not harmful,” Cora snapped running a soft hand down Stiles’s low hump. He is beautiful Derek wanted to tell her. But pride or fear or both prevented his mouth from opening.

 

I’m being lured by an alluring being.

* * *

Derek switched the time he went to the beach. Stiles learned the new schedule two days later.

* * *

 

Laura figured if Derek and Stiles were going to be besties he should learn a thing or two about merfolken plural. The research gave him something to do and if he started to feel like Stiles was less of a threat because of it no one was there to point it out.

 

Stiles's fall back noises resembled whale social calls. Anytime he breached the water he lobtailed Derek until he was soaked and mildly peeved. He had two blowholes hidden behind his ears. Stiles looked like a crusty rock if he spent too much time underwater, felt like a peeled hard boiled egg, and was covered in tooth rakes and light gray to white scars. Occasionally he had barnacles spotting his scalp.

 

Derek adored him.

 

"Stiles stop," he chastised for the second time in as many minutes. Stiles rolled against the sand near Derek's feet blowing heart shaped water up into the air. He repeated the words in an awful mockery of his voice just as the sprinkling salt water peppered Derek's chill skin; "Stiles." The merperson chortled in an off humanoid laugh; he found the sounds unnerving.

 

Derek glanced up from the book on ocean animals that had enough water damage that explaining it to the librarian was out of the question. He would pay for the thing if it meant getting answers, "Little whaleman you belong to the Eschrichtius Robustus migration of California." Stiles barked, not quite a yes, but Derek had the evidence before him. He smiled softly, ran a hand from Stiles's dorsal hump to his speckled fluke. His thin face snuggled further into Derek's popliteal fossa. His heart melted.

 

"How about I read to you from the dictionary?"

* * *

"What is that?" Derek's heart stopped. Three little words halted his continuation to his spot on his private fucking beach. Without thought Derek sprinted along the privacy brush to Stiles.

 

Time slowed as the yelling culprit came to view. The edges of Derek's vision went red and he syphoned salt rich air into his lungs, "Cora Rhea what the hell are you doing."

 

Cora had the decency to look mildly contrite, but failed to mask the sharp frantic light in her eyes. "Derek," she wailed ramming into his side; he immediately turned accusatory toward Stiles who just looked stressed and slightly bitchy, "Derek there is something on Stiles."

 

"What do you mean there is something on him?" He raised his hand to which Stiles aggressively barred serrated teeth flanked by strong baleen. Derek flicked Stiles's slightly upturned nose. Stiles released a vile vixen scream. “Hey little whaleman,” Derek purred in consolation.

 

Cora huffed behind him obviously exasperated at his antics. He could have really cared less. His poor heart is going to forever palpitate awkwardly.

 

“He has whale lice,” Derek told her coolly fingering the small, orange crustacean.

 

“Whale lice? Derek Hale stop touching that now!” Cora swatted at his arm. Derek chuckled lowly as Stiles purred at the feather like touches to a small growing near a lesion. Cora bravely punched him in the bicep Stiles lightly nipped her in retaliation. Derek ignored her violence.

 

“They’re near harmless, Cora, and are more closely related to the skeleton shrimp than the parasite.” She squawked at a loss for words then eventually demanded more explanation. Derek sighed, “The lice feed off of flaking skin or decaying flesh and become extraordinary helpful in life or death situations. Other fish eat them off the whale. Mutualism.”

 

“That doesn’t tell me why he has them.”

 

Derek pinched his eyes shut, counting to ten, “Same reason he has barnacles, he hangs out with a bunch of grey whales. They’re calving right now which means the lice larvae are also swimming around the lagoon and probably got attached to Stiles by accident.”  

 

“Do the barnacles hurt him?” she asked softly prodding at the freeloader.

 

“Not at all. Whale and Barnacle ignore the others presence completely. See here,” Derek nudged a pale scar, “this is from where he probably scratched off a few coming up through the reef to the shallows to see us. Each one has a unique pattern. That’s how I always know it’s Stiles.”

 

Cora studied him with an odd look. The kind of look that pierces through layers of carefully constructed armor to ensure no one looks there. Her eyes softened and Derek was glad when she turned to lure Stiles out further by splashing him vigorously instead of having that talk with him.

 

The one where she tells him he’s insanely invested in a sea creature that can barely say a phrase let alone a handful of words.

 

He already knew that anyway.

* * *

Maybe it was a dumb idea. Derek had never done anything like this, never watched anyone do anything similar, but dammit he had a few weeks yet of vacation and he was going to teach Stiles some English. The thought itself seemed easy enough; Derek himself had been speaking near perfect for two whole decades plus some.

 

What he hadn’t factored in was Stiles being a pain in his ass and him being impatient.

 

“Derek!” Stiles chastised in a perfect impersonation of Laura; equal parts judging and love. Stiles had been chastising him for the last fifteen minutes for no reason. Derek threw down his English curriculum book.

 

“Stiles,” he growled settling rudely close to his companion’s face, “Shut up before I make you shut up.” Stiles giggled hysterically but relented. “If you don’t want to learn right now, fine. But you warranted at least an hour of Derek rambling time.” Derek settled back against the sand, allowed the sun to wash over him and clear his mind so he could just talk. Talking, jabbering, opening up.

 

How?

 

Stiles squirmed partially under Derek’s side and settled. Derek ran cautious fingers from the knobs of his human spine to the knuckles of his whale like tail. “I could tell you anything,” he hums, “Like how my childhood sweetheart died of an injection that was supposed to help her or the first woman I loved ran my parents off the road in a freak ice storm because they didn’t want us together.

 

No I’ll… my mother - She always smelled like good coffee and something roasting. She’d make these dinners, huge dinners, and force the whole family to sit and eat it traditionally. Dad would round the kids up and make us play some sort of sport. He wanted me to be good at baseball, which I was, but I prefered basketball, y’know? I kind of resent that now, like I let him down.” Derek paused, because he wasn’t used to just setting everything out there. But it felt nice, like someone was listening despite the fact that it was mostly gibberish to Stiles.

 

After a long while Stiles shifted, buried his face into Derek’s sun warmed chest and moaned, “Mom.”

 

Derek didn’t understand what that meant, but he swallowed thickly anyway.

 

“Yeah, mom.”

* * *

 

Derek was a standstill. On one hand, Stiles and his calm amiability and strong presence. On the other, his dignity and dull life. Derek enjoyed his time with Stiles, found the serenity that cradled a fierce predator in a glass case interesting. He was not prepared to let go, but he also was not prepared to make a decision. So he did the only thing he could do; he went to see the object of his attraction.

 

Derek had brought his dictionary despite knowing Stiles had no interest in learning to communicate with him outside of their unique dialogue. The dictionary justified his visits as though he needed a superficial reason to see his friend. Although he sort of did with Laura’s nose constantly in his business. Speaking of the devil, she solemnly walked toward him most likely to butt in.

 

“Pods of greys are leaving,” Laura laid a manicured hand on his shoulder, the dictionary by her side flipped a few pages.

 

Derek sighed, “Some kid screamed that earlier,” then; “I think he already went with his herd.” Laura cooed sweet nothings at him, brushed his hair back from his face.

 

“I love you.” Something about those words made Derek hiccup with emotion, but he didn’t cry. He never cried.

 

Laura sat with him a while; interrogated him on the need for a Communicating for Success master edition and various Pre-K guides to learning, forced him to suffer through her exploitation of his meaningless crush, silently stewed with him over Stiles’s no show attitude.

 

Derek hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye.

 

He wasn’t sure if that made him more pissed or ecstatic over missing out on the immediate heartbreak. He could at least fool himself into believing Stiles would show tomorrow, or the next day. Fool himself like stiles hadn’t shown up punctually for the waning weeks of Derek’s vacation. The logic was flawed, the outcome sickening, the hole in his heart growing.

 

Long after the sun had set and ocean chill rose gooseflesh over Derek and Laura’s skin they finally stood to leave.

 

Derek swore he heard the howl of a humpback when his foot breached the property lines of the beach. He allowed himself the hope of Stiles mourning their last day spent apart for their own good.

* * *

Songs.

 

Thousands of voices harmonized to create a cacophony of calls not native to the ocean. Bugles of elk and the howls of lynx mixed together to create crescendos of epic music on par with the greatest symphonies performed. Splashes of various cetacea and humanoid creatures added the rhythm as the ocean set the tempo.

 

Derek sat smiling at the display, dictionary in hand. He couldn’t pick out Stiles’s unique markings in the pod, but he could hear him.The loan humpback in an orchestra of grey whale thrums and merfolk imitations. When his calls sounded closest Derek opened the book to pages creased by dog earing.

 

His soft voice lilted toward the open sea, “I know it’s nerdy. Hell, you have no concept of nerdy. But, last night I… I bookmarked words. Words you can’t even begin to understand and maybe it was because you didn’t want to, I don’t care. Ours was an incommunicado - that’s a, uh, a situation that does not allow for communication. But that's okay because you were my,” he wasn’t sure if he’d was about to use the proper wording, but found it couldn’t matter less, “my anachronism..”

 

He had more words, so many more words, but the calls of his creature, of Stiles, were too quiet to continue to chase after. Derek snuffled out a laugh charged with a tad too much emotion. Stupid Stiles, stupid crush his mind supplied in a chant. He stood on fawn legs with cramps in his stomach.

 

The dictionary flipped a few pages where he left the ocean lapping at its contents.

 

Serendipity /,serənˈdipədē/ noun: the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.


End file.
